Chapter 34
The royal bedchamber was lavish enough to belong in a fairy tale.
A beautiful woman in crimson stood before him, smiling down at the man on the floor. Marks covered his upper body, but he seemed almost numb to the pain.
There was nothing gentle in her eyes.
"Pathetic."
Her foot pressed against his chest.
His mind went blank.
When she lifted it again, he reached for her ankle without thinking.
His hand closed around nothing.
The bedchamber disappeared.
When he looked up again, there were no crimson curtains, no gilded furniture, no palace at all. He was alone in a vast, empty place, watching a familiar figure walk away from him.
Panic hit him with terrifying force.
He tried to follow her. By the time he realized he was practically crawling, he no longer cared.
"Master..."
His voice came out hoarse.
"Please—"
"Leo?"
The voice didn't belong in the dream.
"Leo. Are you asleep?"
Leo's eyes snapped open.
For a moment, he had no idea where he was. His breathing was too fast, his chest rising and falling beneath his shirt, and a thin layer of sweat had formed along his forehead.
Worse was the ache in his chest.
It felt absurdly like grief, as if something precious had slipped out of his hands and he couldn't get it back.
Then the dream returned to him in full.
Leo went still.
What the hell was wrong with him?
He'd dreamed about the scene from the rehearsal—the palace, Princess Vivienne, the captive prince at her feet.
Except the man on the floor hadn't been the student actor.
It had been him.
Leo closed his eyes briefly.
When he'd first realized what he wanted, he'd been convinced something was wrong with him. He'd seen specialists overseas, looking for some way to make the urges disappear.
Nothing had worked.
Eventually, he'd found another way to deal with them.
Emma had been his first Master.
His only one.
Leo's fingers tightened against his knee.
Was he becoming dependent on her?
The thought was ridiculous. He took a slow breath and pushed it aside.
It was a dream. That was all.
Nothing remotely like it would ever happen in real life.
He was Leo Fontaine. At twenty-eight, he had spent years at the top of an industry where people competed just to get five minutes of his attention.
Emma Carter was—
He stopped there.
A few seconds later, his face had returned to its usual calm.
"What is it?"
Max glanced at him through the rearview mirror.
"Look outside."
Leo frowned but turned toward the window.
A red convertible had stopped in the lane beside them.
The driver had bright blue hair.
Leo recognized the passenger immediately.
Emma.
Max sounded genuinely surprised. "Wait. She has a boyfriend?"
Leo's gaze stayed on the other car.
"Boyfriend?"
"I mean..." Max nodded toward the Ferrari. "Same age, driving her around at night, and he's obviously loaded. That's a custom Ferrari."
Leo said nothing.
Max had looked into Emma before because of their arrangement, but there had been no rich boyfriend in the background check. Then again, that information wasn't exactly recent.
He'd already been thinking about finding someone new for Leo. Now he wondered whether Emma might end the arrangement first.
Why would she care about their money if she was dating someone who drove a car like that?
Leo felt an unpleasant tightening in his chest.
So that explained it.
No wonder she'd walked away from all that attention at Nance without trying to capitalize on it. Apparently she had other options.
His gaze drifted back to the Ferrari.
Depending on a man for your future was stupid.
Emma should know better.
He told himself to look away.
He didn't.
She and the blue-haired man were talking about something. A moment later, Emma smiled at him, bright and completely at ease.
Leo's expression cooled.
The two cars stopped side by side at the intersection, the Ferrari waiting to go straight while Leo's car sat in the left-turn lane.
The light changed.
The Ferrari shot forward with a roar and quickly disappeared from view.
That strange feeling from the dream returned.
For one irrational second, Leo almost told Max to follow them.
He caught himself before the words left his mouth.
"Message Emma through the site."
Max glanced at him in the mirror. "For when?"
"Tomorrow night."
Max hesitated.
"I already lined up several new candidates for tomorrow."
"Cancel them."
There was a short silence.
Max looked at him through the mirror again, clearly wanting to say something.
He thought better of it.
"Got it."
Emma turned down Adrian's invitation to dinner and went home.
Not long after she stepped into her apartment, her phone buzzed.
Emma stared at the message.
Her scooter was still with Ryan, which unfortunately meant Adrian now had the perfect excuse to keep bothering her. She'd even had to accept his contact request again because of it.
Tomorrow was packed.
His reply arrived almost immediately.
Emma frowned.
Was this man seriously using her own scooter as an excuse to see her again?
She needed her scooter back.
Eventually.
Emma tossed her bag onto the couch just as another notification appeared, this time from the private app she used for work.
Client L.
She opened the message.
Emma sighed. Bad timing.
She already had a client booked for most of tomorrow, and there was no telling how late that job would run.
Max looked at the reply, then turned slightly in his seat.
"She can't do tomorrow night."
Leo frowned.
Busy?
With that boyfriend?
"She didn't say she wanted to end the arrangement?"
"No."
For some reason, that improved his mood.
"Ask about the day after tomorrow."
Max turned around.
"Leo, we're not even going to be in Nance City the day after tomorrow."
Leo raised his eyes.
"You have a business event out of town," Max reminded him. "We're not supposed to get back until the next morning."
Leo simply looked at him.
Max held his gaze for two seconds.
"...I'll move things around."
In the past, a scheduling conflict had been simple. If Emma wasn't available, they tried again another time.
Apparently that rule no longer applied.
Max decided he valued his paycheck too much to point this out.
A moment later, Emma received another message.
She checked her schedule.
Done.
By the next morning, the gossip surrounding Emma and Leo had cooled, but Emma herself was still very much online.
Clips of her two scenes continued circulating across TikTok, X, Instagram, fan accounts, and entertainment pages. Princess Vivienne, in particular, had taken on a life of her own.
The fact that neither Emma nor Leo had commented only made some people more suspicious.
The bigger entertainment accounts gradually moved on. Without a statement, a photograph, or anything new to work with, there wasn't much left to report.
Emma's performance clips were another story.
A few talent managers had noticed her.
She was beautiful on camera, but that wasn't unusual in the entertainment industry. What caught their attention was the way she held a scene. Even in a student production, people watched when she walked onstage.
And now millions of people knew her name.
There was just one problem.
Emma Carter was strangely difficult to reach.
Her Instagram hadn't been updated in over a year. She didn't seem particularly close to many people at Nance, and the students who did know her either didn't have her number or weren't willing to hand it out.
By morning, more than one talent manager had decided that waiting for Emma to contact them was probably useless.
They'd have to find her themselves.
Emma knew none of this.
She'd taken a shower the night before, gone to bed, and slept perfectly well while strangers on the internet debated her future.
The next morning, she had somewhere else to be.
A taxi pulled up outside one of Nance City's most exclusive private medical centers.
The rear door opened.
Emma stepped out in a fitted black dress that cinched neatly at the waist. Her long hair, usually left simple for class, fell over her shoulders in loose waves. A pair of heels completed the look, elegant without being flashy.
She looked nothing like the college student who had escaped a crowd on a pink scooter the night before.
A security guard in a black suit was already waiting near the entrance.
The moment he saw her, he walked over.
"Ms. Carter?"
Emma adjusted the strap of her bag.
"That's me."
"Please follow me."
She glanced up at the imposing building, then followed him inside.